The greatest ideas come in the most unusual ways. One day Foodiggity founder Chris Durso's son suggested to recreate the US states with food. Durso didn't think of it as a great idea, until his son said that it would be great to give them punny names like "New Pork" or "New Jerky". This is how The Foodnited States of America project began.

When you see a list of trivia about the states, you are sure to hear about the most famous facts; you know, the ones you've heard so many times.
Wendover productions has some facts about all the 50 states, but these are not the facts you've heard before nor the order you would expect them to come to you.

America. It's one of the biggest countries on Earth, both in terms of population and sheer size. It's the planet dominating superpower; the heaviest hitter where culture is concerned; a place known by nearly every single human on the planet... and, to all but the 4-5% of humanity who live there, it makes absolutely no gosh darn sense.

A Block is the smallest area unit used by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating statistics. As of the 2010 census, the United States consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks. Of them, 4,871,270 blocks totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no population living inside them. Despite having a population of more than 310 million people, 47 percent of the USA remains unoccupied.

The visual in this map is fairly astounding but many of the indicated areas are actually developed... just nobody lives there, such as commercial and industrial zones.

Today is April 15. Your taxes are due (not really, filing deadline is Monday, the 18th this year). So you wonder for what you are paying to the government such a large portion of your income? Funny you should ask. Here is a 12 slide presentation of the largest items on the menu.

"See America" is a fantastic national parks poster series by artist Steve Thomas that he created in the style of Works Progress Administration (WPA) posters from the 1930s and 40s. The posters are available for purchase at PrintCollection.com

Far southeast of Nashville, over rolling hills where the last Christian radio stations crackle and turn to fuzz, where light winks from the bullet holes in highway signs and the roadkill skews opossum, lies South Pittsburg, Tenn., home of the cast iron skillet.

Every year on this day, I re-read the threads on 3 websites that kept me informed on September 11, 2001. I think this an important tradition for a few reasons - to mourn for our fallen, to be reminded regularly that we as a nation piss a lot of people off all around the world, and to also be reminded that we have a great unity within us. When faced with a common foe, we stop being anything but Americans. It didn't last long, and it didn't lead to the great things it could've, but we had that spark - that common fire - for a while and we can get it back if we really want to. We can do great things with it if we really want to. We can learn from our past if we really want to.